Pre-Civil War events

The Fairfaxes, father and son, though serving at first under King
Charles I (Thomas commanded a
troop of horse, and was knighted by the king in 1640), were opposed
to the arbitrary prerogative of the Crown,
and Sir Thomas declared that "his judgment was for the Parliament
as the king and kingdom's great and safest council". When Charles
endeavoured to raise a guard for his own person at York, intending
it, as the event afterwards proved, to form the nucleus of an army,
Fairfax was employed to present a petition to his sovereign,
entreating him to hearken to the voice of his parliament, and to
discontinue the raising of troops.This was at a great
meeting of the freeholders and farmers of Yorkshire convened by the king on Heworth Moor near York. Charles evaded
receiving the petition, pressing his horse forward, but Fairfax
followed him and placed the petition on the pommel of the king's
saddle.

The Civil War

When war broke out, Lord Fairfax was appointed general of the
Parliamentary forces in the north, and his son, Sir Thomas, was
made lieutenant-general of the horse under him. Both father and son
distinguished themselves in the campaigns in Yorkshire.

Sometimes
severely defeated, more often successful, and always energetic,
prudent and resourceful, they contrived to keep up the struggle
until the crisis of 1644, when York was held by the Marquess of Newcastle
against the combined forces of the English Parliamentarians and the
Scots, and
Prince Rupert hastened
with all available forces to its relief.A gathering of eager
national forces within a few square miles of ground naturally led
to a battle, and Marston Moor (2 July 1644) proved decisive for the struggle in
the north. The younger Fairfax bore himself with the
greatest gallantry in the battle, and though severely wounded
managed to join Oliver Cromwell and
the victorious cavalry on the other wing. One of his brothers,
Colonel Charles Fairfax, was killed in the action. But the Marquess
of Newcastle fled the kingdom, and the Royalist abandoned all hope of retrieving their
affairs. The city of York was taken, and nearly the whole north
submitted to the Parliament.

In the south and west of England, however, the Royalist cause was
still strong. The war had lasted two years, and the nation began to
complain of the contributions that were exacted, and the excesses
that were committed by the military. Dissatisfaction was expressed
with the military commanders, and, as a preliminary step to reform,
the Self-denying Ordinance
was passed. This involved the removal of the Earl of Essex from
the supreme command, along with other Members of Parliament. This
was followed by the New Model
Ordinance, which replaced the locally raised Parliamentary
regiments with a unified army. Sir Thomas Fairfax was selected as
the new lord general with Cromwell as his lieutenant-general and
cavalry commander. After a short preliminary campaign the
"New Model" justified its existence,
and "the rebels' new brutish general", as the king called him,
proved his capacity as commander-in-chief in the decisive victory of
Naseby (14 June 1645).The king fled to
Wales.Fairfax besieged Leicester, and was successful at Taunton, Bridgwater and Bristol. The
whole west was soon reduced.

Fairfax
arrived in London on 12
November 1645. In his progress towards the capital he was
accompanied by applauding crowds. Complimentary speeches and thanks
were presented to him by both houses of parliament, along with a
jewel of great value set with diamonds, and a sum of money.
The king
had returned from Wales and established himself at Oxford, where there
was a strong garrison, but, ever vacillating, he withdrew secretly,
and proceeded to Newark to throw
himself into the arms of the Scots.Oxford capitulated
following the final siege of Oxford, and by the end of September 1646 Charles had
neither army nor garrison in England, following the surrender of
Thomas Blagge at Wallingford
Castle after a siege conducted by Fairfax. In
January 1647 he was delivered up by the Scots to the commissioners
of parliament. Fairfax met the king beyond Nottingham, and accompanied him during the journey to Holdenby, treating him with the utmost consideration in
every way. "The general", said Charles, "is a man of
honour, and keeps his word which he had
pledged to me."

With the collapse of the Royalist cause came a confused period of
negotiations between the Parliament and the king, between the king
and the Scots, and between the Presbyterians and the Independent in and out of Parliament.
In these negotiations the New Model Army soon began to take a most
active part. The lord general was placed in the unpleasant position
of intermediary between his own officers and Parliament. To the
grievances, usual in armies of that time, concerning arrears of pay
and indemnity for acts committed on duty, there was quickly added
the political propaganda of the Independents, and in July the
person of the king was seized by Cornet Joyce, a subaltern of cavalry
— an act which sufficiently demonstrated the hopelessness of
controlling the army by its articles of
war. It had, in fact, become the most formidable political
party in the realm, and pressed straight on to the overthrow of
Parliament and the punishment of Charles.

Fairfax was more at home in the field than at the head of a
political committee, and, finding events too strong for him, he
sought to resign his commission as commander-in-chief. He was,
however, persuaded to retain it. He thus remained the titular chief
of the army party, and with the greater part of its objects he was
in complete, sometimes most active, sympathy. Shortly before the
outbreak of the second Civil War, Fairfax succeeded his father in
the barony and in the office of governor of Hull.In the field against the English Royalists
in 1648 he displayed his former energy and skill, and his
operations culminated in the successful siege of Colchester, after the surrender of which place he approved the
execution of the Royalist leaders' Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, holding that these officers had
broken their parole.At the same time
Cromwell's great victory of Preston crushed the Scots, and the Independents became
practically all-powerful.

John Milton, in a sonnet
written during the siege of Colchester, called upon the lord general to settle the
kingdom, but the crisis was now at hand. Fairfax was in
agreement with Cromwell and the army leaders in demanding the
punishment of Charles, and he was still the effective head of the
army. He approved, if he did not take an active part in, Pride's Purge (6 December 1648), but on the
last and gravest of the questions at issue he set himself in
deliberate and open opposition to the policy of the officers. He
was placed at the head of the judges who were to try the king, and
attended the preliminary sitting of the court. Then, convinced at
last that the king's death was intended, he refused to act. In
calling over the court, when the crier pronounced the name of
Fairfax, a lady in the gallery called out that the Lord Fairfax was
not there in person, that he would never sit among them, and that
they did him wrong to name him as a commissioner. This was Lady
Fairfax, who could not forbear, as Bulstrode Whitelocke says, to exclaim
aloud against the proceedings of the High Court of Justice.

His last
service as commander-in-chief was the suppression of the Levellermutiny at
Burford in May 1649. He had given his adhesion to
the new order of things, and had been reappointed lord general.
But he
merely administered the affairs of the army, and when in 1650 the
Scots had declared for Charles
II, and the council of state resolved to send an army to
Scotland in order to prevent an invasion of England, Fairfax resigned his commission. Cromwell
was appointed his successor, "captain-general and
commander-in-chief of all the forces raised or to be raised at
authority of Parliament within the Commonwealth of England."

After the fighting

Fairfax
received a pension of £5000 a year, and lived in retirement at his
Yorkshire home of Nunappleton until after the death of the Lord Protector. Nunappleton and
Fairfax's retirement there are the subject of Andrew Marvell's
country house poem, 'Upon Appleton
House'. The troubles of the later Commonwealth recalled Lord
Fairfax to political activity, and for the last time his appearance
in arms helped to shape the future of the country, when George Monck invited him to assist in the
operations about to be undertaken against John Lambert's army. In December 1659
he appeared at the head of a body of Yorkshire gentlemen, and such
was the influence of Fairfax's name and reputation that 1200 horse
quit Lambert's colours and joined him. This was speedily followed
by the breaking up of all Lambert's forces, and that day secured
the restoration of the monarchy. A "free" Parliament was called; Fairfax
was elected member for Yorkshire, and was
put at the head of the commission appointed by the House of
Commons to wait upon Charles II, at the Hague and urge his speedy return. Of course the
"merry monarch, scandalous and poor", was glad to obey the summons,
and Fairfax provided the horse on which Charles rode at his
coronation.

The remaining 11 years of the life of Lord Fairfax were spent in
retirement at his seat in Yorkshire. He must, like Milton, have
been sorely grieved and shocked by the scenes that followed – the
brutal indignities offered to the remains of his companions in
arms, Cromwell and Ireton, the
sacrifice of Henry Vane the
Younger, and the factious splintering that undermined the
effectiveness of Caroline Parliament. Fairfax died at
Nunappleton, and was buried at Bilbrough, near York.

Analysis

As a soldier he was exact and methodical in planning, in the heat
of battle "so highly transported that scarce any one durst speak a
word to him" (Whitelocke), chivalrous and punctilious in his
dealings with his own men and the enemy. Honour and
conscientiousness were equally the characteristics of his private
and public character. But his modesty and distrust of his powers
made him less effectual as a statesman
than as a soldier, and above all he is placed at a disadvantage by
being both in war and peace overshadowed by his associate
Cromwell.

Fairfax had a taste for literature. He
translated some of the Psalms, and wrote poems
on solitude, the Christian warfare, the shortness of life, etc.
During the last year or two of his life he wrote two Memorials
which have been published – one on the northern actions in which he
was engaged in 1642-1644, and the other on some events in his
tenure of the chief command. At York and at Oxford he endeavoured to save
the libraries from pillage, and he enriched the Bodleian with some valuable manuscripts.

The metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell
authored "Upon Appleton House, To My Lord Fairfax", nominally about
Fairfax's home, but also his character as well as England during
his era.

Lord Fairfax of Cameron's only daughter, Mary Fairfax, was married
to George
Villiers, the profligate duke of Buckingham of Charles II's
court.

See also

References

Further reading

Fairfax's correspondence, edited by G.W. Johnson, was published
in 1848-1849 in four volumes (see note thereon in Dict.Nat.Biogr.), and a life of him by Clements R
Markham in 1870. See also Samuel
Rawson Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War
(1893).

Rider of the White Horse (1959) by Rosemary Sutcliff gives a fictional
account, based closely on the historical record, of the early part
of the civil war viewed from the point of Fairfax's wife.